Meet Me at Greenhouse Three
by HollyBrianne
Summary: A pair of star-crossed lovers, a whispered invitation, a date at greenhouse three. / Dramione fest piece
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **My entry for TheMourningMadam's Where Gods Dwell fest, you can find the rest of the entries over on AO3.  
My prompt was Pyramus and Thisbe, a couple who were neighbors but their families were enemies. They professed their love through the shared wall between their homes and planned to meet in person by a mulberry tree. The original tale goes dark from there, but I'm a fan of happy endings!  
Speaking of endings, this story has two of them! Chapter two will be the first ending, chapter three will be the second, so pick one and enjoy, or read both and tell me which you like better :)  
Beta credit to PotionChemist  
Aesthetic credit to MegRaven

* * *

He loosens his Slytherin tie and stares at the dormitory wall separating him from his Gryffindor princess. He imagines she's doing much of the same, letting loose after a long week of classes and Head Girl duties. She has probably already kicked off her shoes. Maybe she's swept her unruly brown curls into a soft bun on the top of her head how he likes, the way that gives him unobstructed access to the sensitive skin of her neck. He lets his fantasy run wild, thinking of her slipping out of her jumper and skirt.

But he can't have her. Not right now. She'd told him earlier in the day that she has plans with her two best friends this evening. Friends who _ loathe _ him. His feelings are not wounded, of course, the loathing is reciprocal — it's simply irksome that spending time with him or with them are mutually exclusive for her.

"Tomorrow morning," he whispers against the wall, at a spot marked with a fingernail scratch in the shape of an x. The charm they had put on this mark makes his voice travel through the wall; she would hear him as if he is right over her shoulder. "Meet me at greenhouse three." There's no response, but he can picture her crooked coy smile by instinct. That night, he lay in his four-poster with anticipation, dreaming about their first rendezvous under the mulberry tree — the day they had discovered how delightfully private the greenhouse is on the weekends.

Breakfast the next morning creeps by far too slowly for his liking, but he labours through. He must not appear too eager to leave, lest any curious parties get the idea to follow him. He sees his witch get up from her seat across the Great Hall and he quickly averts his eyes. He'll give her a four-minute head start; any less may seem suspicious to their classmates, but any more would be stretching his patience to its thinnest. He counts under his breath. _ Two-thirty-eight, two-thirty-nine, two-forty. _ The allotted time is up. He gives chase.

He knows something is wrong before he rounds the corner of the greenhouse. There are voices. _ Plural _ . And _ male. _ Her arsehole friends must have followed her when he wasn't looking. He pauses mid-stride.

"Don't tell me you've come here to meet _ him _ ," the half-wit says. They like to pretend that he doesn't exist, that his relationship doesn't exist, so they never refer to him by name, only taunting nicknames and bitter intonations. He pays them back in kind. He calls one Half-wit and the other Wannabe, with sarcastic civility.

"_He _ doesn't deserve you," Wannabe chimes in.

He agrees, but there's an edge to Wannabe's tone that implies something more. Something possessive. He could start a fight if he wanted to, a real fight. If he steps around the corner to confront them face to face, he could come to blows to defend her honour.

He rounds the corner.

"_They _ don't deserve you," he says as he reveals himself. "If they can't trust your choices, do they truly support you?" He narrows his eyes. "Some friends they are."

Half-wit is immediately ready with a snarky retort and an extended wand. Wannabe, the brute, seems to forget about magic altogether and produces balled-up fists.

"Enough, the lot of you!" she shouts, throwing her hands out. The flare of her nostrils stops him cold — she means business. "This happens every bloody time you're within twenty feet of each other. Do any of you care what I want? Because it isn't _ this _ . I won't put up with it anymore, I won't!"

There's a scared silence in her wake. None of the men want to be the first to speak again and earn more of her ire. She scoffs. "I won't," she repeats, low and threatening, and storms away. The idiots are fast on her heels. Typical Gryffindors, he thinks, running headlong into certain danger.

As the only Slytherin, he stays behind to mourn his losses. There go his stolen kisses under the mulberry, the playful touches that could have turned heated. He kicks the side of the greenhouse and the glass rattles in its frame.


	2. Ending 1

She's right. She usually is, though, he admits. He cares about her, which means he has to care about what she cares about. He __loves __her, and while he can't see himself affording __that __sentiment elsewhere, he knows he has to try something.

After roughly an hour of considering his other options, most of which are just various ways to make it up to her using his tongue, none of which stand much of a chance to help this particular situation, he resigns himself to the only real solution.

He finds his two rivals in the first place he looks, the Quidditch pitch, comparing broom speeds.

"Mine's the latest, Stratos X," he says, to get their attention. "We can test who's faster if you care for a race."

At first, he receives nothing but glowering looks and tense stances.

"You want to chat about brooms?" Half-wit asks incredulously.

"No," he answers, and it strikes him that this one word may be the first genuine thing he's ever said to them. He turns toward the hoops so he doesn't have to see their faces as he continues.

"I'll do anything to make her happy."

Wannabe reacts with a distrustful huff. "Are you saying we wouldn't?"

"I mean it's something that I'd __hope __we have in common." He turns back around so he can make his point eye-to-eye. "And the thing that would make her happy is for us to be friends. So..."

He extends his hand out to them for a shake and suddenly he remembers the last time he'd offered his hand to the half-wit; it was the beginning of their first year at Hogwarts and he'd been soundly and publicly rejected. He'd deserved it then. He'd like to think he deserves the opposite now.

*.*.*.*

It's been at least forty minutes, he guesses, since he'd found her in her dormitory and practically begged through the x mark on their shared wall. ' __Please come back to the greenhouse, I've got something to show you. __' It's nerve-wracking, but he'll wait all day if he has to. His companions, however, are starting to get impatient. Finally, his witch comes around the corner.

She looks between him and the other two with wide-eyed confusion. "What's going on here?"

"We wanted to apologize to you. Harry and Ron helped me set this up for us." Draco indicates the cozy table for two behind him.

"Oh, is it 'Harry and Ron' now?" Hermione asks, still in disbelief. "You," she hesitates, pointing her finger at each of them in turn, "are all friends now?"

"We do have some common ground, __Draco __and I," Harry offers, emphasizing that he, too, can use proper names.

Ron shrugs. "Won't stop me from beating him in a broom race later."

"No." Hermione shakes her head, a flirtatious smile blooming on her lips. "I think Draco will be too busy for a broom race today." There's a gagging noise from the peanut gallery, but Draco pays them no mind. All he cares about is his witch, and she's back in his arms.


	3. Ending 2

**AN:** Please read this chapter as if chapter 2 doesn't exist, this is an alternate ending.  
Apologies for any possible errors here, I did this section super last minute so it has not had the luxury of a beta reader.

* * *

"Easy there."

He spins on the spot and finds his head of house paused at the door to the greenhouse.

"Sorry, Professor." He tries to make a polite getaway, but the professor holds a hand out to stop him.

"I need to harvest shrivelfig leaves for next week's potion lesson. Care to help?" Although technically a question, he understands it as it is intended: a command. He enters the greenhouse and gets to work alongside his professor. But he's far too distracted for so delicate a task. It's not until he feels the firm press of a hand on his shoulder that he registers the growing mound of shredded leaves on the work desk in front of him.

"Is this about the Head Girl?" his professor asks before he can clear away the debris. It's surprising how concerned the older man sounds. Perhaps it's this sudden informality that allows him to give a more intimate answer.

"She's the best thing I could ever hope for."

He receives a patronizing smile in return. "Ah, young love."

He bristles at the sentiment and looks his professor over reproachfully. Of course a wrinkled, white-haired man would dismiss his feelings.

"I'm seventeen," he says, puffing out his chest. "I'm of age."

"You misunderstand. I don't belittle young love, I cherish it." The professor's eyes become glossy and shine like the reflective pool of a Pensieve. Maybe the smile hadn't been patronizing. Maybe it was a memory.

"Yeah, well," he says, returning to his dejection, "she'll never be mine. Not really. If her friends think I'm the enemy, that's what I'll always be."

"Have you considered treating her friends as something other than enemies?"

"What do you know about it?" he pushes back again, but the professor continues.

"When I was about your age, I fell in love with a Gryffindor, too. Her friends hated me and vice versa. The difference is, back then I actually __was __the enemy."

Suddenly, he's acutely aware of how quiet it is in the greenhouse. He squints at his professor and, for the first time in seven years, he wishes he had paid more attention in History of Magic. How many decades had passed since the First and Second Wizarding Wars? How old would his professor have to be?

A handful of questions bounce around his head. He manages to get just one out. "What happened?"

"I spent a long time trying to erase my wrongdoings, replace them with good. And one day, I got very, very lucky— she decided to love me back."

He has already pried into the man's life, so he can't stop himself from probing just a bit more. "I mean, how did it end?"

"End?" The word comes out as a laugh. "My boy, who said it ended?"

His eyes drop to the wedding band on his professor's finger. An optimistic warmth returns to his chest; there may be hope for a Slytherin— Gryffindor romance yet.

"Professor Malfoy?"

"Hm?"

"Thanks."

The older man winks. "Go get her."


End file.
